“We must bring back into society a deeper sense of the purpose of living. The unhappiness in so many lives ought to tell us that success alone is not enough. Material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy.” – Ben Okri

Prosperity Without Growth tackles an intuitively fascinating subject. Economists and politicians tend to assume that the key goal of policy is to create perpetual economic growth. There is, however, a finite amount of resources on Earth, whether oil, steel, or even volume of sunlight. Are these two facts compatible?

Unfortunately, despite my interest in its subject, I didn’t find Prosperity Without Growth compelling. The first two thirds seemed to add little to the discussion, while frustratingly the final third introduced ideas and frameworks that could well have made for an interesting book had they been discussed earlier. The book’s audience also seems unclear: he goes from introducing macroeconomic equations, likely appealing only to economists, to explaining very basic economics of little interest to the same.

In that final third, Jackson points out that to reconcile growth and limits, one of two things must happen. Either we must have sustainable growth, in which the economy grows but doesn’t require more energy inputs, as for example when we move employment to low-carbon jobs, or we must have a sustainable no-growth economy, as when productivity increases but we work less hours to compensate. To do either, he says, we must establish limits, fix our economic system, and change our social logic.

Perhaps the most interesting piece I have read on this subject is a discussion between an economist and a physicist, available here. It introduces ideas that had never occurred to me, like a planetary heat death from waste heat, and though I’m not sure I agree when we discuss that scale of issue that ruling out space travel is fair (you’ll have to read the link for yourself), I found the whole thing fascinating. I’m not sure I can say the same about Prosperity Without Growth. Still, it’s a book that tackles a critical issue of broad interest to many, and for that alone it deserves some credit. It does also manage some nuance and depth at the end – I just regret it didn’t manage it earlier.

Keep reading here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, get more illumination by joining the Subtle Illumination email list to your right!